Ezekiel 31:18

How we would love to make ourselves the one exception, so that what applies to others would not apply to us! God therefore points them to Assyria, a power as strong as Egypt itself.

Had Egypt learned the moral lesson? On the contrary, did it not hurry to follow in the same steps? And if Pharaoh copied the Assyrian's glory and claimed as much or more, should he not rightly face the same destruction? … Egypt must go down to the lower parts of the earth with the rest. Natural power and political skill give no exemption.

The tree is the constant symbol of the great ones and powers of the world. Take Ezekiel 31, the Assyrian, or Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4.

The cedar of Lebanon stood out among the trees for height, size, shade, and beauty. The Assyrian had stood out like that among the nations. God withheld nothing that could adorn or enlarge Nineveh and the nation whose capital it was. He even gave it enormous far-reaching power and influence over the countries around it, so that all envied it.

Assyria, like Egypt, was an oasis in the desert belt that runs across nearly the whole breadth of Africa and Asia. For Assyria the two rivers made that oasis, and it owed everything to them, as Egypt did to the Nile. Anyone could see it was dependent at its very core. Yet what grew out of that was self-exaltation, not a sense of dependence. In the end humiliation had to follow, for God's law is: everyone who exalts himself will be humbled.

Were they not all following the same path, which could only underline Sheol's claim upon them? — the claim of the unseen world that gathers men from every side. For the wheel turns, as Ezekiel has told us over and over. The man lifted up is exalted only for a moment. Then he must come down to the lower parts of the earth. Follow this out, and you find that in God's thought there is a resurrection too, and that whatever lasts in blessing lies there for us. But most people never look that far, and where the lesson is not accepted, the blessing itself is not reached. So God challenges Pharaoh here. Sheol had its rights over him also, rights which in God's judgment were already granted.

It signified the separation of a people from the world to God… Circumcision became another word for Israel. People called them 'the circumcised,' and the other nations 'the uncircumcised.'

The great powers had already fallen like the uncircumcised — people God did not own, and so did not uphold. All must give place to this new power in the hands of Nebuchadnezzar. What marked Egypt out was the pride of nature. It followed its own will and acknowledged no God.

Only in God is there permanence. He will show it in His people on earth, as in heaven, once they have bowed to learn both themselves and Him. Until then, Israel's circumcision counts as uncircumcision, and they are even more guilty than the nations they despise.